The most contentious element is Article 13 of the proposed directive (EU-speak for law). It seeks to make Internet services that host large amounts of user-uploaded material responsible for policing their holdings to prevent copyright infringement. Until now, companies have been able to draw on the safe harbor protection in the EU's e-commerce law, which online services enjoy when they are "mere conduits." The new copyright directive would withdraw that protection for any service that "optimizes" content, which includes things like promoting, tagging, curating, or sequencing a site's contents—most major online services, in other words.

Legal and technical problems

In the future, sites would have two options. They could enter into a licensing agreement for all the content uploaded by their users, although the proposed law does not explain how that could be done for fragmented markets where there is no single licensing body. Alternatively, online services must "prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightsholders."